1. Trump’s self-esteem? Off the charts–his self-descriptions include being “the greatest” this, the “best” that, the “most” whatever. Anyone who claims otherwise is just “wrong” or “stupid”, or has some imaginary personal beef against Trump, because in no way will Donald Trump admit to any ignorance, mistake, lie, or out-and-out wrongdoing. Which leads to…

1.1 Trump’s ego cannot “mediate” between the conscious and unconscious. Reality testing?! Trump’s conscious and unconscious create their own reality, and it’s a reality that he seems to feel no need to test. His “reality” is part-and-parcel of his personal identity, and it is impenetrable by truth, facts, and even Trump’s own previous words or deeds.

1.2 While Trump may be “conscious” in the literal sense of the word, he is not a “thinking” subject.

With his penchant for superlatives, Trump might possibly think that he has a “superego“, but the OED’s definition of superego leads me to believe that Trump’s ego vanquished his superego a long time ago:

Noun:Psychoanalysis The part of a person’s mind that acts as a self-critical conscience, reflecting social standards learned from parents and teachers

“Self-critical”? Rarely and barely. Hell, Trump told evangelicals that he didn’t feel the need to go to confession, since he doesn’t think that anything he does is wrong. And I learned things like manners, respect and intellectual curiosity from my parents and teachers, apparently unlike Trump.

Trump has a dysfunctional relationship with the truth. According to Politifact, only 8.4% of Trump’s statements have been factual. Their review of Trump’s statements shows that a whopping 70% of Trump’s statements are rated “Mostly False”, “False”, or “Pants on Fire.”Here’s one of the “Pants on Fire” stories:

“The day after the 2016 Republican National Convention, Trump said his vanquished Republican rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, had never denied that his father was in a 1963 photo with Lee Harvey Oswald, who went on to assassinate President John F. Kennedy that November.

Trump said: “All I did is point out the fact that on the cover of the National Enquirer there was a picture of him and crazy Lee Harvey Oswald having breakfast. Now, Ted never denied that it was his father. Instead he said, ‘Donald Trump.’ I had nothing to do with it. This was a magazine that frankly, in many respects, should be very respected.”

[The idea that ‘the National Enquirer should be very respected’ should rate a “Pants on Fire” of its own.]

“…a little hyperbole never hurts,” Trump wrote in his 1987 best-seller The Art of the Deal. “People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”

“Almost every deal I have ever done has been at least partly for my ego,” the billionaire declared in a 1995 New York Times piece titled, “What My Ego Wants, My Ego Gets.”

“The same assets that excite me in the chase often, once they are acquired, leave me bored,” he told an interviewer in 1990, as his boom years were sliding toward bust. “For me, you see, the important thing is the getting, not the having.”

Trump,[sic] stresses his Ivy League education and revels in juvenile jabs, labeling his adversaries “stupid,”‘’dumb” and “bad.”

“I know words,” he declared at a December campaign rally where he criticized the Obama administration. “I have the best words. But there’s no better word than stupid, right?”

Wrong, Mr. Trump. As a Presidential candidate, now nominee, some of the “best words” that you should memorize the meanings for are: honesty, integrity, class, civility, respect, humility and responsibility. I know that these terms and ideas are foreign to you, but you should familiarize yourself with them – there might be a quiz between now and November.

This is our daily Open Thread–feel free to talk about this or any other topic.

25 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Saturday, July 23, 2016: Ego”

Hello again to all the critters in the Zoo. It’s been a while since I’ve visited. A while back I had to wipe out my OS and lost my bookmarks/favorites. You don’t know how hard it was to find ‘The Zoo’ on my search for this blog, forgotting ‘The Watering Hole’ didn’t help.

Thankfully I remembered Wayne Schneider’s name and added along with ‘The Zoo’ to my search and ta-da, I finally found it! 🙂

As for Donny Trump, the guy is a sociopath, a narcissist, a megalomaniac, a racist, a bigot, a misogynist, a bully, a pompous, bloviated gasbag, rude, crude, disrespectful, boastful, arrogant, clueless about foreign and domestic policy and attracts and appeals to the ugly underbelly of America.

The latest allegations of unwanted sexual contact by Trump come from Jill Harth, a makeup artist and business associate of the billionaire in the early 1990s. According to Harth, Trump sexually harassed her on numerous occasions, including cornering her in his daughter Ivanka’s bedroom and attempting to have sex with her. In 1997, Harth filed a lawsuit detailing Trump’s alleged repeated efforts to force her to have sex with him, as well as a number of other outrageous and inappropriate behaviors. . . .

Although there’s been scant coverage of the allegations, Harth is the third woman to accuse Trump of sexual assault. In June, a lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court accusing Trump of raping a 13-year-old girl in 1994, the same era as Harth’s attack. That attack allegedly took place during a party held at the home of Trump’s admitted billionaire friend, Jeffrey Epstein, who in 2008 served 13 months in jail for soliciting underage girls for sex. . . .

The earliest charge of rape against Trump come from his first wife, Ivana Trump. The allegations were made during a deposition taken during the contentious divorce between the two.

All who are surprised there are only three accusations, please raise your hand.

He is supremely icky. The thought of him having sex with anyone makes my flesh crawl. Perhaps there’s been scant coverage of the allegations may be due to the fact that most people do not want to let that thought into their brain, ever.

Trump didn’t write “The Art of the Deal.” He had a ghost writer — name escapes — who I saw being interviewed recently on MSNBC. He said it was really a bummer of a job, and he damn near quit halfway through. He stuck with it, though, and sometime after publication a Trump lawsuit sought to not only dismiss the writer’s royalties, but demanded he pay back everything he’d already received.

Bottom line: no matter where one looks at the Trump “story”, the only things to be found are lies, lies, and more lies — and the graft that enables absolute human crud to ascend to a high level of “success” (that is, of course, if “success” has anything at all to do with money and power).

The guy’s name is Tony Schwartz. In one interview I saw Tony said he had gotten the okay from Donald to listen in on his phone conversations, which he did. He also said he never signed any non-disclosure agreement, that this was before Trump started requiring NDA’s of people he employed.

CNN commentator and Donald Trump supporter Scottie Nell Hughes was not happy with the Spanish she heard coming out of Hillary Clinton’s new vice presidential pick’s mouth at a rally in south Florida Saturday.

Former Virginia governor Tim Kaine was named Friday as Clinton’s running mate and the campaign touted his time as a missionary in Honduras where he learned to speak fluent Spanish.

“I appreciating him having multi-cultural and speaking Spanish, I think that’s a great idea,” Nell Hughes said. “And we can all bring out our languages. Melania can come out and speak her five different languages as well, but what Mr. Trump did, he spoke in a language that all Americans can understand. That is English!”

Nell Hughes went on to say that Trump’s English is “one good thing” she experienced at the Republican National Convention this past week. “I didn’t have to get a translator for anything that was going on at the RNC this week. And I’m hoping I’m not gonna have to start brushing up back on my ‘Dora the Explorer’ to understand some of the speeches given this week.”

For comparison’s sake, about 30.3 million viewers across 11 networks tuned in to watch the final night of the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, when former GOP nominee Mitt Romney delivered his acceptance speech, according to Nielsen. Trump called that event “the single most boring convention I’ve ever seen” in an April interview with The Washington Post.

Looking back over the last two presidential election cycles, Trump’s fourth-day numbers also fall short of those garnered by the 2012 and 2008 Democratic National Conventions, which by Nielsen’s estimates drew 35.7 million viewers across 13 networks and 38.4 million viewers across 10 networks, respectively. And his performance is well shy of the final night of the 2008 Republican National Convention, which attracted around 39 million viewers across eight networks and was headlined by Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Prolly ’cause even (R) viewers finally couldn’t stand to watch or listen by the final night.

Yesterday at work, I spoke with a customer from New Jersey, whose father knew Fred Trump, Donnieboy’s dad, for several decades. He asked me if I had been watching the convention, and I told him honestly that I cannot watch because it makes me sick. He said that Trump scares the hell out of him, and listed several reasons; then he started asking me a few “did you know…” questions, such as the Roy Cohn connection. He was pretty startled when I said I was aware of that and and was familiar with the other facts he mentioned. He ended with, “Thank you, you’ve made my day!” 🙂

Oddly, he spoke very highly of Trump’s father, mentioning in particular Fred’s work with “housing for Jews and blacks” – I didn’t want to get into an argument, so I let that slide.

You were probably wise to let that on slide; it’s highly unlikely that one can ever convince anyone that their long time friend and hero is/was a racist bigot. Might even change their mind and cause them to vote for the racist/bigot’s racist/bigot/fascist son.

Well, well. Welcome back Invictus! Long time no read!
It appears that Drumpfs lying, cheating, raping ass may be a fantastic opportunity for yours truly.
I have been putting the final touches on V3.x2 of the….
RUCLyingBastardometer !
Just in time for this election toilet swirl. Sale priced at just $1400.00 (without batteries or frompulators, sold separately) Come and get em. Special discount of negative 20 percent for anyone wearing a Make Amerika Fascist again hat, tshirt or boxers..